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The proposal! represented ths moderate course and had the merit of seeming to offer alleviation of a disturbing condition which threatened the cause of public education in Virginia. For a number of different reasons, the people endorsed .them overwhelmingly by voting for a change in the State constitution that would permit those localities that did not want integration to provide funds for the education of students in private schools.
The General Assembly, however, seemed to read into the resalts of the referendum a mandate to float the U.S. Supreme Coart. Some of the people did want this and they received encouragement from high quarters. The more sober cinded—and they are many— did not. Before the constitutional convention could get down to business, the Gray proposals had been discarded. Wooed by the siren song of an Oklahoma-born editor of one of the big Virginia dailies, they fell in love with a strange goddess called Interposition. The chief charm of Interposition seemed to be that it had been invoked some 125 years ago, under entirely different circumstances, by Virginia legislators, many of whom bore the same names as the legislators of today. Fortunately, before the thing got to the voting stage, enough of our legislators had either heard from the grassroots or had vaguely sensed
there was a strong element of the ridiculous in their actions and the ultimate resolution was toned down from the originally conceived bellow of defiance.
But with our embracing of this will-o-thawisp, Virginia became the leader of a movement. Other Southern states followed, and with other resolutions that were more rabid than ours. That is where history is going to point the finger at us. We have led the other states down a cul-de-sac at the end of which, inevitably, they will have to turn back.
The actions of the General Assembly, as a result of the referendum vote, have been regretably
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